


There's a Darkness on the Edge

by hi_irashay



Category: Homeland
Genre: Because this fic probably deserves it, F/M, Feelings, Is there a tag for OVERUSE OF METAPHORS, Light Angst, Mutual Pining, POV Alternating, Sorry Not Sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-03
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-18 20:01:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4718675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hi_irashay/pseuds/hi_irashay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For this is what they did - they poked and jabbed, they bobbed and weaved in an intricate dance.  They avoided, and in their avoidance somehow managed to find each other still.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Sun

**Author's Note:**

  * For [angelheadedhipster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelheadedhipster/gifts).



> A very merry SUNBURN gift for my beloved @angelheadedhipster. Who finally caught up on this show and thus made me able to write this for her. Love you more than a fic can express!
> 
> I apologize, as always, for the Feelings AU (or DO I?!?!), and for the fact that the new snippets of S5 we've been given thus far already invalidate most of my story. OH WELL.
> 
> Varying amounts of inspiration from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kg0ekQBmzKs

“I know you know how,” she said, the sides of her mouth quirking slightly upward. The sunlight, filtered through the slats of the blinds, cast the room in dappled shadow. It lent an enigmatic shade to her already inscrutable expression, as she sat beside his prone form on the bed.

“That’s not the point, Carrie,” Quinn replied. He reached his left hand hand up to brush a stray clump of hair off her sweat-damp forehead. Whether she was hot from their actions of the past hour or from the scorching day outside, he knew not. He took his time, letting his fingers trace over the soft curve of her ear down to the sharper angle of her jaw, sweeping down her neck before coming to rest on her right shoulder.

Carrie scoffed, undeterred. She shook off his hand with a backward roll of her shoulder, simultaneously coming up to swing a leg over his hips. “How about now,” she purred, leaning her face down close to his. Her breath ghosted over his face as she bent to press the lightest of kisses on his cheek, on his nose, on his mouth.

Quinn grunted, pressing forward to deepen the kiss. Carrie laughed against his mouth, still an incredible sensation to him. Quinn pulled her closer at the thought, one hand back up to her shoulder and the other moving to tangle in her hair. Trying to ground her, trying to ground himself - clinging to her and the moment with measured ferocity.

Carrie broke away slightly, her breathing labored. “I just don’t see what the big deal is anyway, it would just be a small one.” She tilted her head to one side, fixing him with an intense gaze under a raised eyebrow. “I kind of want something to remember you by, Quinn.”

He exhaled, shifting his hips under hers to a more comfortable position. “And what would you need that for, Carrie? I’m right here.” Even after all this time, after all they had been through, parts of her were still impenetrable to him in a way that their shared years and miles, victories and defeats, couldn’t overcome. Moreover, Quinn suspected they might remain that way. And vice versa, his mind whispered.

Carrie smiled a cryptic smile. _A Cheshire cat smile._ “What are you, afraid? Of something permanent?” she challenged. “Tattoos are removable, might I remind you.” As she spoke, she none-too-subtly pressed her hips down against his. Quinn hummed at the contact, struggling to keep his eyes open against the slow burn radiating from his groin.

“Maybe that’s actually what I’m afraid of,” he replied. It was his turn to smile cryptically. Or at least, what he hoped was cryptically. For this is what they did - they poked and jabbed, they bobbed and weaved in an intricate dance. They avoided, and in their avoidance somehow managed to find each other still.

His smile turned into a grimace as she ground her hips down harder. “Bullshit, Quinn.” She bent back down to kiss him again, her tongue softly tracing over the outline of his lips, before lifting her head to meet his eyes. “Impermanence is the only constant of our lives. Now, are we going to do this or not?”

“If you want some sort of crappy prison-style tattoo memento of me so badly, then that is what you’ll get.” Quinn paused, squeezing her hips gently. “You know I can never say no to you, Carrie.” He moved one hand from her hip to take her hand, intertwining their fingers.

The almost-grin was back. “Well, that’s not quite true, is it?” Her tone was playful, a sharp contrast to the hardening of her gaze.

“What are you talking about?” Quinn queried.

Carrie sat up, wrenching her hand from his grip and crossing her arms. She arched an eyebrow at him. “Where are you, Quinn?”

“I’m right here,” Quinn replied, increasingly confused by her line of questioning. He made to reach for her, but she jerked away from his touch.

“I mean it, Quinn. Where. Are. You?” She punctuated each word with a sharp jab of her finger to his shoulder. She was becoming agitated, her eyes wild as they bore into him with a signature intensity.

As he searched her face for answers he knew he wouldn’t find, Quinn felt exasperated and concerned in equal measure. _What did I miss?,_ he thought to himself. “Carrie, the fuck-”

“Where are you, where the FUCK ARE YOU?” She was screaming now, bordering on hysterical. She attacked him, her deceptively small frame lashing out with unpredictable force. _Tactically small,_ he couldn’t help but think through the sharp pains. While her reputation often preceded her, many people still couldn’t help but underestimate Carrie when they first met her. This had worked in their favor many times in the past. Just as now, it was working in hers.

Quinn did his best to block her blows, but her position over him gave her the advantage. Carrie let her fists fly to land on his chest, his shoulders, his arms, up in a defensive position. Quinn’s instincts finally took over, bucking her off with a sharp twist of his hips. She landed ungracefully on the floor next to the bed, limbs akimbo and wincing slightly.

“Quinn,” she whimpered in dismay, her chin starting to wobble. “Please, where are you…”

Quinn awoke in a cold sweat, reaching for the gun that was there and training it on the spectre that was not. His heart threatened to hammer out of his chest as he struggled to regulate his breathing. _Another fucking dream._

Quinn lowered the gun, tucking it back in under his threadbare pillow. The soft light of a Syrian dawn filtered through the opening of his tent. He was viscerally aware of the soft sounds of the rest of the team going through their morning routines outside.

He rose up and crawled to the tent entrance, stepping out into an already blisteringly hot day. _Why the fuck are we in Syria in the summertime?,_ he mused to himself for the umpteenth time. _Why the fuck are we in Syria at all?_ A dangerous line of thinking, one he couldn’t entertain anymore. Not now, not after everything that had happened.

The sun had barely risen, only just visible from the valley in which they had made camp for the night. Heat shimmered in waves over the arid landscape and distorted any hope of an accurate long-range view for scouting. They had to keep moving, their window of opportunity for this job was closing by the second.

“HEY,” he barked to the team. “We move out in 10.” Scattered grunts and murmurs of assent filtered back indicating their understanding and compliance.

Quinn ducked back into his tent, surveying the wreckage he’d made of his bedroll in his dreaming. He exhaled heavily, trying to push all memories of the night and the woman out with the air from his lungs. There was not a force on earth strong enough to erase what she was, what she had been, what she always would be. But, that never stopped Quinn from trying.

As he bent to pack his things, his hand brushed against a sheaf of paper upon which he had begun writing yet another letter the night before. It was always the same - a compulsion too strong to ignore, followed by a few hastily-scribbled sentences of declaration and affirmation. It always ended the same, too, with a growing realization of impossibility, eventual abandonment to fitful sleep, and destruction the morning after.

Given their urgency in moving out, last night’s attempt would have to wait. _Tonight,_ promises as he folded the sheaf into his bedroll. _It doesn’t mean anything,_ reassurances as he broke down his tent and shoved it in his pack. _Symbolic pussy bullshit,_ self-loathing as he hoisted his things onto his back before going to meet the rest of his team.

The sun climbed higher, but its rays couldn’t touch some of the darkest corners of the valley. Even where they couldn’t touch with light, they still burned.

He burned.


	2. The Moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Days, hours, weeks had passed and still she felt Quinn’s hand on her cheek like a brand, like a tattoo. The shadowy presence of his fingers waxed and waned, remaining a shroud over her entire life. It reminded her daily of what once was, and what could have been, had the whole world not gone to shit.

Carrie sat alone in the middle of the couch, half listening to the 11:00pm news. The summer night was relatively cool, cool enough that Maggie had turned off the AC and opened the windows to let a breeze in. Maggie had gone to bed a while ago, leaving Carrie alone with her thoughts, the soft play of breeze-blown hair over her face, and the newscaster.

The current story was the same as it had been for the past few days - broad speculation about an ongoing investigation involving the murder of a congressional aide. The newscaster was doing her best to maintain the audience’s interest in the increasingly tired story, but Carrie found her eyelids drooping nonetheless. “Sources say that the investigation turned up no new leads on the murder of Robert Phillipson last month. For more, we go to reporter Quinn Billings in the field. Quinn?”

Carrie’s eyes shot open and she froze, deafened by her accelerating heartbeat and the telltale buzzing in her head. _Quinn._ His name still threw her, visions of him still haunted her - in his absence he tilted her world on its axis, where once he had helped to keep it upright.

After losing arguably the three most important men in her life - her father, to death; Quinn, to the work; Saul, to ambition - Carrie had felt untethered. Upon leaving Saul’s house that ill-remembered day, Carrie had found herself suddenly in Maggie’s driveway without any recollection of getting there. And she had stayed ever since, trying to piece her world back together one strand at a time. Her professional and personal lives had long been too closely intertwined, according to some. But this time it had been - and still was - extraordinarily difficult, nigh impossible, for her to untangle and mend.

Days, hours, weeks had passed and still she felt Quinn’s hand on her cheek like a brand, like a tattoo. The shadowy presence of his fingers waxed and waned, remaining a shroud over her entire life. It reminded her daily of what once was, and what could have been, had the whole world not gone to shit.

With her heartrate and breathing reregulating, Carrie found herself subconsciously pressing her own left hand against her cheek. A cheap facsimile of their actions all those days ago. Quinn had become yet another ghost in her head. _And it’s getting too fucking crowded in there,_ she mused. This ghost, at least, she could do something about. _Theoretically._

Carrie made a split-second decision and pulled her phone out of her pocket. She dialed on autopilot, rising off the couch to walk to the door. As the phone rang she stepped out onto the front porch, breathing in deeply the softly perfumed air of suburbia.

“It’s almost midnight, Carrie.” Max’s voice was sleep-gruff on the other end of the line. “I know you’re going to say it’s important, and that’s fine, but I just wanted you to know.”

Carrie couldn’t help but let out a soft bark of laughter. “Believe me, Max, I know. And it is important.” She paused for a beat, surveying the quiet twilit street in front of her, before continuing. “Remember what we talked about a few weeks ago?”

There was a rustling on the other end of the line - presumably Max shifting in bed - before he responded. “You want to find Quinn, don’t you.”

“Yes.” Carrie sighed. “I do. Will you help?”

“We’ve lost a lot of time.” Max was always blunt. “Did you ever manage to find out anything from Dar Adal?”

“Ha,” Carrie scoffed, agitated at the memory of their last encounter. “That motherfucker.”

“I’ll take that as a ‘no,’ then.” Max’s voice was less gruff now, more alert. “We don’t have much to go on here, Carrie.”

“I know we don’t, Max, why do you think I’m calling you?” Carrie’s agitation grew.

“Could he have tried to contact you since he left, you think?” Max could still be so hopelessly naive. Naive enough to drive her to her frustration tipping point.

She exploded. “No,” Carrie spat, breathing heavily in her anger. “If he wanted to contact me, he knows how. If he wanted to see me, I’m easily found. I’m not the one who fucking left.” Max was silent on the other end of the line, giving her a moment of space. “Sorry.” She felt sullen, ashamed. “I’m just so tired of fighting.”

Max remained silent. Carrie scrubbed a hand over her eyes, already regretting making this call. “You know what, it’s fine. Forget it. I’ll-”

“Fara liked Quinn,” Max said softly. “She trusted him.”

Carrie was momentarily thrown off. “She did.”

A few more beats of silence. “Where do you want to meet?”

She thought carefully for a moment before responding. “Our rendezvous point from the Sanders case in 2011. Equidistant, remote, off book.”

More rustling from Max’s end. “I will see you in an hour, then. And Carrie-”

She hung up without hearing him finish, heading back inside to grab her keys.

The way to the meeting site came to her easily, her body somehow remembering a route that she hadn’t used in four years. The ache in her chest from hearing his name grew stronger the closer she got; her grip on the steering wheel tightened, her foot grew heavier on the gas pedal.

Carrie pulled up to the edge of a forest - their rendezvous point lay just a ten minute walk into the woods. She put the car in park and checked her rearview mirror. A flash of color caught her eye, a bright spot against an otherwise black landscape. Momentarily on high alert she turned to look behind, but saw nothing. Nothing except for one of Frannie’s stuffed animals left behind in the backseat.

_Frannie._

In an instant it all came back to her like a sucker punch to the gut. She couldn’t do this. Not again, not anymore, not after all that had happened and all she had learned. Two different versions of Carrie had been at war for so long. She was tired of fighting for and against herself - it needed to end. She felt all the drive go out of her just as suddenly as it had arrived.

Carrie reached back to grab the stuffed animal, breathing in its scent as she pressed it to her face. A few shuddering breaths later and she made up her mind, restarting the car and putting the animal in her lap. After one last glance at the dark forest, Carrie reversed the car and headed back onto the road home. _Tired. So damn tired._ She couldn’t find it within her to call Max, but knew he would understand. Eventually.

In spite of the summer night, she felt chilled all over as she drove further away. She had one hand on the wheel and the other mindlessly stroking the stuffed animal’s head. The memory of Quinn’s hand was evaporating from her skin molecule by molecule, helped along by the track of a single traitorous tear. _All tattoos fade with time._


	3. The Eclipse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hey,” he said. Softly, tentatively. As if she might run. As if he might, too.
> 
> “Hey,” she replied, shoulders slumping in relief. In defeat. In resignation.

_This was a mistake,_ Carrie thought. The Arlington Farmer’s Market was always a zoo, but on a holiday weekend it bordered on chaos. If the oppressive heats and crowds didn’t get her, the aggressive Americana for the 4th surely would. Carrie scanned the crowd almost mindlessly, a stubborn relic of a former life. Starting at the center, move to the edges, doubling back on all the dark and hidden places. Searching, always searching...

“Carrie?” Maggie’s voice pulled her out of her reverie. “You OK?” Maggie pushed Frannie in her stroller, Ruby and Josie loitering behind, squabbling over who got the last bite of a fruit sample.

“Yes, sorry,” Carrie replied. “I think I might be a bit overheated, going to find a shady spot for a moment.” She mustered a strained smile. “You got the girls?”

Maggie’s gaze lingered, scrutinizing Carrie’s forced expression. “Sure, we’ll just get some lunch and head to the picnic tables.” She paused, tapping her fingers restlessly on the stroller handle. “See you there?”

“Absolutely,” Carrie replied confidently. “I just need 15min.”

Maggie nodded before turning to push Frannie towards the meal stands, calling to the girls to quit fighting and follow. Carrie watched their retreating backs until they vanished in the crowd. She headed towards the shadiest bench she could see, one on the edge of the market that bordered a small wooded area.

It was a hot and soupy day, the unbearable humidity of a Mid Atlantic summer causing Carrie’s hair and clothes to stick uncomfortably. She continued to scan the crowd, always alert, always searching. For a moment it became too much - all that sensory input with no outlet. Carrie closed her eyes against the demanding scene.

When she opened them again, a familiar mirage loomed at the edge of the trees to her right. Her faithful ghost, haunting her to the very end, it seemed. She sighed and looked away, but not for long - he always drew her back in.

Upon a second look, the mirage was closer. _That can’t be…_ She stood, craning her neck to get a clearer view. The bodies of the other market-goers seemed to melt away, creating a clear path between her and the supposed ghost. She started walking without another moment’s hesitation. With every step he grew larger and more solid, his edges more defined and his expression more apparent. She quickened her pace.

Faster, closer she walked. Still he stayed, still he grew, still he became clear. Another burst of speed and she was in front of him, staring disbelievingly into the eyes of the man who had left without a trace a year prior.

“Hey,” he said. Softly, tentatively. As if she might run. As if he might, too.

“Hey,” she replied, shoulders slumping in relief. In defeat. In resignation.

They breathed, together but separate, caught once again in each other’s magnetism. Quinn looked older, darker, more haggard. _Haunted. He looks haunted._ Neither dared to blink. _He looks like me._

Time seemed to slow around them, the hot and crowded market fading into dark shadow. They drank each other in with an uncomparable, insatiable thirst.

Quinn broke first, shifting his gaze downward as his shoulder slumped perceptibly. The simple shift in posture unleashed something Carrie hadn’t realized she’d been holding back. With a soft gasp she moved swiftly to hold him. After an agonizing moment, his arms came up around her.

Their bodies met as old friends, melting against each other with more heat than even the summer day had provided. They stayed, a single point of frenzied tranquility, oblivious to the bustling world around them. Seconds ticked by, their only movements pulling closer, tighter.

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this.” Carrie finally broke the silence, her voice muffled by Quinn’s shoulder. She was breathless, their embrace bordering on uncomfortably tight - no amount of physical contact could reassure them of each other’s reality.

They continued to breathe together, their minds at once miles apart and exactly in sync. Quinn pulled back slightly, searching Carrie’s face. She looked down with uncertainty, before meeting his eyes.

“Mission accomplished?” She queried. “How was-”

“I’m done.” A pronouncement, his final word on the subject. “I mean it.”

Carrie smiled softly, as gently as she knew how. “No, you’re not.” She brought her right hand up to his left cheek, mirroring his actions all those months ago. “And neither am I.”

He held her gaze, a steady burn of azure on cyan. Carrie caught the quirk of a lip and a crinkle of an eye before he turned slightly to press a kiss into her palm, as she had done in another lifetime. Her awareness shrunk to that single point of contact, him branding her anew with a tattoo.

“If you say so,” he murmured.


End file.
